Five Years of Encolor: What We’ve Built, What We’ve Learned, and Where We’re Going

For much of my career, Encolor was a quiet idea built from a lifetime of noticing who gets left out when systems are designed without the people they’re meant to serve.

I’d spent about 16 years working in the energy sector, first for the utility in my own community and then across the program life cycle. I got to see how deeply energy burdens affected people’s lives. I couldn’t think of the calculations on my screen as abstract numbers—they were my neighbors choosing between comfort and affordability, or moms like me living in homes that were inefficient and unhealthy because no one helped them see other options. I knew that helping people reduce their energy bills was about more than savings—it was about improving quality of life.

But 2020 changed something in me. The urgency became sharper. The questions became bigger. The quiet idea became ever louder and more persistent.

For a long time, I stayed quiet in spaces where I knew I had something to say. But in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, silence wasn’t an option anymore. I began speaking up inside my organization, which became a working group, which ultimately evolved into the realization that equity wasn’t a side project for me. This was the work I needed to do full time.

It was a moment when so much could no longer be ignored. We were watching inequities sharpen in real time. And I began to see that “saving customers money” wasn’t enough. It was time to become intentional about how we did it, who benefited, and whose comfort and safety had been overlooked.

I found myself thinking about what I wanted my children to see in the world. I thought about energy, enthusiasm, and the idea of dreaming in color. Late one night, with just me, my computer, and a dream in color, I registered Encolor.

One of my first projects was a training with AESP about how to design more equitable programs that would focus on the people behind the meter.

When I launched, I thought that’s what my career would look like: just me working behind the scenes to help organizations design programs that were more inclusive and help individuals leading program design and evaluation become champions for equity.

Five years later, Encolor has become something I never could have fully envisioned. It’s taken on a life of its own, seeded by possibility, imagination, and the futures our children deserve.

Along the way, a lot of people took chances on Encolor. Organizations hired us to help them build equity plans, develop more equitable programs, facilitate co-creation groups, evaluate their programs for human-centered impact, and more. When I started this company, it was just me trying to make a dent in the way our industry approached equity. Today, Encolor is a team of people who chose to take a chance on doing things differently. Their courage humbles me every day.

We’ve grown into an organization that pushes boundaries, surfaces questions our industry hasn’t asked before, and invites people to think differently. I’m proud of that. I’m proud of a team that shows up bravely, stands in front of rooms full of people, and is vulnerable enough to ask: Why is this the way that it is? What are your goals, really? What does success look like for you—and for the people you serve? How can we help you do this differently to achieve better results for your community?

To our clients, partners, collaborators, and supporters—thank you. Thank you for stepping into this work with openness, for challenging yourselves, and for committing to a vision of an energy future where people are seen, heard, and valued. Thank you for choosing to focus on humans in an industry that, for as long as I’ve been in it, has focused on numbers.

Five years in, I’m more energized than ever. We still have so much to build, question, and reimagine. And I’m grateful you’re here with us on the journey.

The next five years will be more challenging and push us to drive deeper toward change. Encolor won’t solve system-level problems alone—no single organization can. But we can be one of the voices pushing the work forward, asking harder questions, and modeling what it looks like to center people. We hope you’ll continue to push the boundaries with us for the next five years.